Kisumu

As promised, here's a picture of the room when the bednet is down and tucked in:

I'm actually writing this early on Friday morning, because I didn't get in until late last night and had to get up early this morning anyway (7:30 flight means 6:30 taxi), so I figured there was no point in waiting. Yesterday we had the whirlwind tour of what the Walter Reed Project is doing in Kisumu. We started here:

It's not a Walter Reed Project hospital, but this is where their pediatricians work. It's called Obama Children's, for all intents and purposes. Unfortunately, some American names are a bit hard for Kenyans to get right:

Yeah. Anyway, we started at the WRP's headquarters in Kisumu and got the brief run-down of what they do. Most of their stuff is centered around malaria, because there's so much of it. This includes training microscopists around the world on diagnosing malaria from blood smears, the development of an automated blood smear machine (which was seriously cool to watch; I would have taken a video, but then the others would have laughed at me), malaria vaccine trials for both HIV-infected and non-HIV-infected children, drug resistance testing, surveillance, and some I'm probably forgetting. It's quite the enterprise they have there.

We also visited the entomologists (bug people) and saw what they were working on (more malaria, also some sandflies for leishmaniasis studies), and then went to the clinical site where they are doing the malaria vaccine trials, among other things. One of those other things is the development of a demographics survey of the district, which is literally a bunch of people going around with PDAs and GPSs, mapping the district and asking people basic demographic questions, such as how many people live there, how old they are, what they do, level of education, etc. They're almost done with the mapping, and while this doesn't sound like much, it's providing the starting point for endless future studies. This can be tied into visits to the hospital, to figure out if there's any geographic commonalities in where people with disease x live or who gives birth at home vs at the hospital; surveys can be given to ask why people do or don't seek care; water points can be determined to figure out who has clean water and who doesn't; serosurveys (looking at people's blood) can be done on, say, 1% of the population easily, because you know how many people that is and you know how to chose houses randomly for the study. There really is no limit to what can be done with this database, which is why the colonel in charge was so eager to show it to us. He's very interested in setting up rotations--real rotations, not my meet and greet--in Kisumu for MPH students and preventive medicine residents, and is very eager to show what they have to get the ball rolling.

The whirlwind tour ended at about three (without lunch), and then it was back to the hotel, where COL Coldren and I met for a beer (or three) before heading out with the people at the labs for dinner and another beer (or three). We did a lot of career discussing (mine, not his; as a colonel, he pretty much has his career figured out), and then, like I said, it was a late night getting in. And then I got up early to get ready (and talk to Brad on Skype), and now I'm here. And now leaving so I can get breakfast before the taxi comes to take us to the airport.